Improving Quality in the Application Portion of the Processing Fiscal Operations Report and Application to Participate: An Approach to Developing and Refining Edit Checks.

Advanced Technology, Inc., Reston, VA.

Edits that can be performed by the processor who applies for federal campus-based student aid programs are discussed, along with a longer-term approach to assessing the efficacy of recommended edit checks. Attention is focused on the accuracy of data submitted by institutions on the application portion of the Fiscal Operations Report and Application to Participate (FISAP). Recommended are additional internal edits, as well as cross-year edit checks and cross-data source edit checks using Pell Grant and Higher Education General Information Survey data. Recommendations for long-term assessment include developing a data gathering and analysis plan for analyzing the validity of potential edits and reasonable tolerances for these edits. Principles embodied in the approach include comprehensiveness, efficiency, congruity, and verifiability. There is a need to clearly define what constitutes an error and to analyze data collected at colleges to determine the comparability of certain types of data. The 13 current edit checks used on the FISAP's application portion should be considered for incorporation in the FISAP application editing system. (SW)